


Watercolors

by rashaka



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: #basically its the night after 316 and there are FEELINGS, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 03, Smut, find love where you can, hold on, take comfort where you can, the world is ending so what will you do with your last days on earth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-08-07 19:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7726840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rashaka/pseuds/rashaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a rustle pulls him awake, it’s full dark.  The last candle winked out some time before, and the only light remaining is a thin silver glow from the window.  Bellamy blinks as his eyes adjust, taking in the wooden slats of the ceiling, then the quiet room.  Beyond the door, he can hear men and women moving and whispering, but the sounds are muted: a hush of a prayer, a soft whimper of pain.  He turns his head, expecting to see Clarke asleep beside him in the darkness.  She’s not.<br/><br/>She is awake too, and she’s watching him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go... a smut series! Thanks to [storyskein](archiveofourown.org/users/storyskein/pseuds/storyskein) for editing and encouragement. This is gonna be a fun ride.
> 
> Opening lyrics are from the song ["Watercolors" by Janis Ian](http://www.janisian.com/lyrics/watercolors.php), which is so painfully s2-s3 bellarke that it makes me flail.

__

 

 

          _But for tonight, turn out the light_

          _Hold me, come on, come on,_

          _And set me free_

          _Lend me your charity_

  
  


When Clarke tells him about the power plants, his whole body shudders, and Bellamy thinks he might collapse right there.  He ducks his head and inhales, tries to shut out the spectre of her words until all that’s left is the reality before him.  

“Okay, I believe you,” he croaks.  Already his throat is swelling, and it’s becoming harder to speak.  Each word is measured and meted out.  “We’ll talk about that, but right now we have to get our people out of this tower.”

And for the next several hours, that’s all they do.  Most of the survivors on the top floor are Arkadians, and the few Grounders are cooperative enough, despite the language barrier.  As if by some twisted blessing, ALIE has left all of her victims weak, malleable, and grief-stricken.  Softened of their harder edges—at least at first.  The ones who were unaffected direct the rest as best they can toward helping the wounded and setting up a pulley system with the lower floors.  They manage to pass water back and forth, and tools.  Unfortunately, the effort to destroy the base of the elevator was almost too effective, and it could be weeks before they get it operating.  The stairs will take at least two days to clear of debris, so, for now, the formerly feuding groups have to patch each other up and hope someone keeps order on the ground.

They lose four people to jumping before they set up a mandatory pair system.  Suicide, Abby explains through her broken voice—half whispers and half gestures—is the greatest immediate health threat, and if they have to tie people down to keep them alive, then that’s what they’ll do.  Grounders and Sky People alike, no one else is going to be lost to this.

Night comes quickly, and Bellamy is enough of a realist to know that he has to sleep at least a few hours, or he might actually start to hallucinate.  There’s already dark spots in the corner of his vision, and twice he’s had to stop and touch the wall to stave off dizziness.  Their small group out of Arkadia didn’t sleep the in night leading up to the attack, and except for a few minutes in the Rover on the way here, Bellamy hasn’t closed his eyes since waking up on Luna’s beach.  When exhaustion finally bears down on him, Miller and Bryan wave him over to lie near their spot.  A fission of fear runs like ice down his spine at the thought of sleeping in the open of the throne room.  He shakes his head and tucks himself into a corner by a closet, his back to the wall and his knees up in front of him with his gun across his lap.

When a gentle touch lands on his knee, he jerks and swings his rifle tip out so fast the person has to reel back to avoid being hit.

“Shit,” he gasps, barely audible among the moans of the survivors scattered down the hall.  “Clarke.  Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry."  Clarke winces, and with a single finger pushes the barrel in her face to one side.  “I should have said something first.”

“What is it?”

She gives him a grim half-smile, the kind he’s seen all too often lately.  “You need to come with me, I’ve got something to show you.”

The push to his feet takes an eon, and his muscles creak and pop.  Clarke gives him a hand, and he takes it because pride and Bellamy parted ways about three disasters ago.  She slips her hand around in his but keeps a grip on it, tugging him down the hallway.  He steps over sleeping bodies and tries not to jostle anyone.  The urge to ask where they’re going hovers on his tongue, but speaking hurts and sometimes it’s just easier to let Clarke do what she wants to do.  When she stops by a small room on the East side, Bellamy recognizes it as one they’d checked during the barricade.  It was locked tight, so they’d let it be, but as he watches Clarke pulls a ring of keys from her belt and slips one into the iron keyhole.

“Where?” he croaks.  She waves the question away, and tugs him into the room, turning the lock shut behind them and adding a cross-bar for insurance.  He blinks and meets her eyes in question.

“It’s safe now,” pronounces Clarke.  She tries to smile.  “As safe as we can be for the night.  If you’re gonna sleep, sleep here.”

Bellamy nods, accepting her reassurance at face value.  Clarke’s constantly doing this stuff—surprising him with her resourcefulness and her consideration—yet his inclusion in these gestures still takes him aback.  She found this room and saved it, then hunted him down and brought him here and now she’s looking at him with her eyes gone soft.  Of all things, it humbles him.

“Okay,” he whispers, and Clarke does smile this time.

The chamber around them is smallish, sparsely decorated in comparison to the stately bedrooms they’d been fighting across this afternoon.  A few accoutrements hang on the walls, but everything is old and weathered, and if Bellamy were to guess, he’d say the room belonged to a servant of some kind or a low ranked ambassador.  There’s a high shelf of personal items, a wash tray and a tub of water by a desk, a waste bucket with a lid in one corner, and a narrow window with bars on it.  

A medium sized bed fills up the back half of the room; Bellamy glances at it, exhales, and looks down at his tattered, filthy clothes.

“Come on,” says Clarke, ignoring his gloomy demeanor.  She nudges him to take his jacket off, and he does.  “We’ll sleep in our underclothes, okay?  Nobody’s getting in here with that bar down.  It’ll be okay.”

Her earnestness is so intense it makes him blink, but Bellamy nods and starts to strip as best he can.  And he gets it—she’s trying to tell him that he doesn’t have to be ready to fight at any moment.  They can relax a little here, and let their guard down.  Bellamy knows it’s a false hope, that they really can’t forget where they are, but if pretending will help her sleep, then he can pretend too.  He tugs his top off, wincing as all his bruises ache from the gesture.  Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees Clarke gingerly peel off the corset thing around her torso.  He quickly lowers his eyes to the floor and tugs his shoes off.

When he’s down to just his trousers, he notices Clarke standing by the wash basin, dipping the corner of a cloth into the water and trying to dab her chest.  The movement is weird and stilted, too specific for his liking.  

“Clarke,” he says lowly and crosses over to her.  She glances up, and presses her lips together, trying to avert her eyes.  She’s already stripped out of her pants, and normally the prospect of seeing of Clarke in nothing but a dark shirt that barely reaches her thighs would make him anxious, but he’s too fucking tired to care.  Bellamy takes the rag out of her hand and examines the blood on it, then sees more blood crusted in two dark, risen scabs on her chest.  The placement is strangely surgical: two even points, marring her flesh and muscle but avoiding the heart.

“That’s not from a fight.”

“No,” agrees Clarke, voice trembling.  She won’t meet his gaze, but she doesn’t take the rag back either.  When he tentatively raises it, she nods.  In slow movements, Bellamy drags the wet cloth over the skin around the two punctures.  He can see them for what they are now: incisions.  Very narrow, but deep enough to worry him.  Small dribbles of blood leak out of the crust covering them, and he tries to wipe it away without disturbing the new scabs.  Docile, Clarke waits with her arms at her sides, letting him touch her with a trust that is almost unnerving.  He dips a fresh corner of the cloth in the basin, and tries to clean a few other cuts on her neck and cheek.  When that’s done he looks at the two wounds and frowns.

“We need to wrap it,” she says, answering the question before he can ask it.  Bellamy raises his eyebrows, and Clarke points at the bed.  “Can you tear a piece off the sheets?  At least five inches wide, and at least three feet long. Please.”

The sheets are as clean as anything else around here, so he prepares the bandage the best he can, folding it to make a long strip.  Bellamy swallows when Clarke slides her shirt down a little and pulls first one arm, then the other, out of the wide collar.  He’d already seen her bra folded neatly on the desk with her other clothes, so now her shoulders are bare and the black cotton is pushed down enough to give access to the space just below her collarbone.  She sees he’s ready, and raises her arms with a grimace.

“A cross wrap would be better, but I don’t have the energy.  So here’s what we’re gonna do..."     

Under Clarke’s careful direction, he winds the bandage under her arms, flat across the wounded portion of her skin, and then behind her, and crossing back to the front to tie it off.  He only tightens it when she insists.  

“Doesn't it hurt?” Bellamy asks when he sees the pinch of it under her arms, the way the fabric is stretched taut over her skin.

“It’s not going to hold off the bleeding if we don’t put pressure on it,” replies Clarke, so he shrugs and ties it off in the front, snug as he can.  “It’ll loosen up when I sleep anyway,” she adds, “so better if it's tight now.”

When he’s finished Bellamy makes to back away, but Clarke catches his arm.  “Wait,” she whispers, ushering him toward the stool by the desk.  “Let me see your neck?”

At a loss for any reason to say no, Bellamy lowers himself to the stool and lets Clarke tilt his head up, frowning down at his features.  Bellamy almost makes a joke about how he’d be frowning too if he had to look at himself, but the thought of breaking their companionable silence with a joke feels taboo.  When she slots herself between his knees, with her impossible posture and the elegant way she does everything, his eyes swing dutifully up to the ceiling.

He expects her to go for the place where Kane’s fingers wrapped around him, but Clarke surprises him again.  Beginning at his forehead, she works her way methodically down.  With deliberateness and care, she wipes Bellamy’s face in broad strokes, removing gore and dirt.  The tackiness of someone else’s dried blood falls away with her ministrations until his skin feels slightly cool, and all that remains is the lingering sting from a week’s worth of strikes and bruises.  

“Hello,” she whispers, the corner of her mouth raising a little.  She swipes the cloth over his mouth and his chin, and even with the fabric between them Bellamy can feel the pressure of her thumb on his lips.  When Clarke puts her finger under his chin it saves him from a reply.  He closes his eyes in a grimace as he bares his neck.

“Oh Bellamy,” she sighs.

One by one, he feels the soft pads of her fingers touch his throat.  He doesn’t need a mirror to guess what she’s looking at because he’s seen it before: blue and purple blooms across his neck, like a ring of flowers meant to choke the life out of him.  With his eyes shut, Bellamy sinks into the stool and tries not to shiver as Clarke wipes his throat with the damp rag.  There’s not much she can do, and they both know it, but a tender part of him loves her for trying.

Eventually, she cleans him up to her satisfaction, and even though his throat is ablaze with pain, he’s grateful to feel a little refreshed.  She makes a cursory pass over his shoulders, sliding the wet fabric quickly up the back of his neck once, then around to the front.  Almost hasty, she hands the rag to Bellamy and steps back.  

Finished, one hand on her hip, Clarke examines her handiwork.  When she clicks her tongue in consideration, the sound and gesture is so much like something Gina used to do that it takes him aback.  Clarke goes on.

“Try not touch your throat.  Actually, try not to do anything.”

He stands, so abruptly that she jerks.  For a moment all they do is stare at each other.

“I’ll try,” says Bellamy after the pause gets uncomfortably long.  “Thanks.”

“Yeah,” says Clarke.  “Same."   She takes back the half-bloody rag and sets it on the desk, straightening the corners until it’s a neat square.  “You wanna get some sleep?”

Relief washes over Bellamy, and he almost sways on the spot.  “More than anything.”

Together, they climb into their respective sides of the bed, Bellamy kicking off his trousers at the last minute.  The fabric is itchier than the stuff they saved from the Ark, but it’s heaven compared to the scraps and leaves they had for that first month on the ground.  Instead of a pillow, a large blanket is folded flat at the top of the mattress, and Bellamy sinks onto it with a sigh.  He knows he’s selfish, taking comfort when friends and strangers are making do just outside the door, but Clarke wants him here.  

“Goodnight Bellamy,” she whispers.

He pushes the words past his sore vocal cords: “Goodnight Clarke."  

She snuffs out all the candles but one, then turns on her side to face the door, pulling the light blanket up over her shoulders.  Bellamy forces his eyes shut and tries to make his muscles relax.  There’s a method he used to do as teenager when fear for his family kept him up all night: focus on each limb, one at a time.  Tell that part of himself to slow down.  Relax.  Rest.  Be safe.

Sometime halfway through, he tricks his body into sleep.

When a rustle pulls him awake, it’s full dark.  The last candle winked out some time before, and the only light remaining is a thin silver glow from the window.  Bellamy blinks as his eyes adjust, taking in the wooden slats of the ceiling, then the quiet room.  Beyond the door, he can hear men and women moving and whispering, but the sounds are muted: a hush of a prayer, a soft whimper of pain.  He turns his head, expecting to see Clarke asleep beside him in the darkness.  She’s not.

She is awake too, and she’s watching him.  

Bellamy stares for a time, then gingerly shifts onto his side.  The motion brings him close enough that he can see the moonlight glinting off Clarke’s eyes: they are wide and gray in the darkness, with little glimmers of light reflection.  Her hair, thick and pale, spreads across the bed in a messy nest of waves behind her.  Bellamy wonders if she’s slept at all, or if she just took the bed so that he would too.  When he settles, his head rests on the makeshift pillow, but this time, his eyes are open and his gaze doesn’t break hers.

It’s tempting to talk, but the longer the silence between them stretches, the more impossible it seems to break.  Clarke watches him, still and shadowed, her appearance almost vulnerable.  Even in the dark, Bellamy can see the quiver of her lower lip and crease between her forehead.  So powerful is the urge to comfort her that he almost speaks, but something greater holds back his words.

Maybe she sensed that something too, because in the silence and the moonlight, her expression changes.  It's hard to quantify the difference, but he knows it immediately.  People have looked at Bellamy this way his whole life.  On Earth, on the Ark.  He recognized desire even when he was eighteen and too terrified of discovery to act on it.  What use is that to a boy with a secret? Pretty whims like lust or romance were for other, freer people.

Clarke looks at him that way now, as if by the force of her attention she can summon him to cross the sheets and take the step that she won't.  Her gaze breaks from their staring contest to run over his features: big shoulders to hold her with, big hands to cup her with.  Clarke's eyes drop to his mouth as her own falls open, and Bellamy feels himself already stiffening beneath his briefs.

He almost says the words—he can be those things for her.  He can be hard for her and soft for her and he can hold her until all the shadows have fled.  But it would be a lie.  Tomorrow the shadows will still be there.  The radiation will come and the ghosts of their loved ones will linger, and there is nothing Bellamy can offer Clarke Griffin to take that pain away.

Like he did weeks ago, he lifts a hand to push a lock of hair back from her eyes.  She tips into the gesture until he’s cupping her cheek, and takes a deep breath.  As she inhales, Bellamy sees her chest rise and her body relax, as if this point of contact lets him breathe right along side her.  He inhales too and it’s hypnotic, almost unreal how in tandem they are.  How synchronized they can be, down to the even air that fills their lungs.  

As one, they breathe.  In.  And out.  

In.  

And out.  

Clarke’s gaze is unwavering, unshaken, when Bellamy slides across the bed to her.

His hand on her cheek travels up to her hair, his long fingers cupping the back of her head and pulling her mouth to his.  Clarke surges forward, her own hand grabbing his upper arm and digging into the muscle for purchase.  Her kiss is overwhelming, almost volatile.  When she smashes lips against his Bellamy meets her with equal fervor, opening his mouth and taking the thrust of her tongue.  It’s hot and unapologetic, all that he's ever wanted from Clarke, and after today he doesn’t care about the rest.

He doesn’t care about what it means, or why she’s doing it, or what it will change.  If it turns his world upside down again and ruins their trust, or even—he’s ashamed to think it, but not ashamed enough to stop—if this is a betrayal of Gina’s memory.  He doesn’t even care if it’s a huge mistake.  It could make everything harder and someone is probably going to end up hurt but he doesn’t _care._ About feelings, or their past, or what their poisonous, violent world will do tomorrow to take this away.

Fuck the world.  Clarke is right here, pushing him backward into the bed and sliding her leg up his side.  Fuck the chips and the armies and the stupid people outside.  As Bellamy cups her face with both hands, her hair falls in a curtain on either side of them, blocking out the faint moonlight from the window.  Clarke pulls back to breathe, and he gasps too, then she’s on him again, and it’s almost a fight for control.  Bellamy drops a hand to her waist and pulls her fully on top of him, one leg on either side.  He bucks up with his pelvis and Clarke groans into his lips.  If it weren’t for the rough inelegance of the whole thing, he’d think he was dreaming, so he kisses her as intensely as he can just in case it ends.  She pulls up long enough to sweep her hair back in annoyance; he tugs her down again to curl his tongue into her mouth.  

They slow grind for a while, and Bellamy can feel every inch of her hot thighs on top of his, her panties rubbing down on his briefs until his cock is hard between them.  The weight of her excites him.  From her breasts pushing into his chest to the hand moving up his body, and further down to the hot center of her practically fucking him through their underwear, he wants this.  He _has_ wanted this, for so long it can’t even be measured.  Just a sense hovering on the edge of his mind, ever-present and yet shunted away.

There’s the Clarke he cares about and trusts, and there’s the Clarke he wants to fuck until she passes out from coming, and most of the time he can tell them apart.  Most of the time she’s his friend, and sorting his libido from his head is like putting on a different shirt.  Think this, don’t think that.  Live, fight, survive.  Trust in Clarke and forgive her when she fails and don’t be the monster that asks for more than she can give.  Don’t be the next person to demand another piece of her heart.  Don’t resent her for not cutting it out.  Don’t, don’t, don’t.

Clarke squeezes him with legs as strong as a vice, banishing any thought but _yes._

She swipes her tongue against his, and Bellamy reciprocates by hooking his fingers on the edge of her panties and rolling them down.  Always quick on the take, Clarke shimmies out of them and is back again, the raw heat of her cunt pushing down on the fabric still covering him.  His dick feels sensitive enough to come just from this, but he has the self-control to go so much farther tonight.  As far as she needs him to go, he will.  Bellamy pushes up and over until he rolls her beneath him, one hand fisting her hair into the mattress.  He kisses her hard as he slots his hips between hers.  With a moan Clarke combs her hand through his hair too, her caress trailing down to the back of his neck.

Like a chain pulled tight, Bellamy’s muscles lock and his body freezes up.  For a second he can’t move, the pain a fresh blossom on his skin.  Clarke instantly drops her hand to his shoulder, rubbing it gently.  She pulls away from the kiss and tucks her cheek flush with his.  Her warm breath tickles in his ear, a physical counterpoint to touch of her hands, and in that caress Bellamy gradually relaxes. As he comes down from the tension, he takes shallow gulps of air and leans into the safety of Clarke’s embrace.  

For the next minute she drops small kisses along his cheek and jaw, mindful not to go too low.  Here’s another thing they should talk about first, but then—talking sounds like work.  He doesn’t want to work or think when Clarke is below him, her shirt riding up to show the bottom swell of her breasts and her knees high on either side of his waist.  Bellamy dips his head and kisses her collarbone, up her neck, drawing a line to her ear with the soft press of his lips.  One hand holds his weight off her and he slides the other up to cup Clarke’s breast.  It’s warm and heavy under her top; when he lightly squeezes she hisses and arches into the contact.  He doesn’t know if that means she’s greedy or he is, because he squeezes more and she turns her face to kiss him.  

Always, always she goes back to kissing.  He’s gonna remember that.

Her own greedy hands find his briefs and she attacks them like an obstacle.  She yanks them down over his ass, stopping to squeeze his cheeks roughly before shucking them off.  Bellamy loses them somewhere down in the sheets and he doesn’t care, a problem for tomorrow.  He drags one palm from her raised knee down to her thigh, and he pulls her legs open as he slides his cock over her slick entrance.  Clarke’s breath catches.  They’re forehead to forehead now, not so much kissing as breathing the same square inch of air.

Slowly, she captures his bottom lip in her mouth.  When Bellamy thrusts inside her, she bites down on his lip, and the combined sensation wracks him.  The sting of her bite contrasts with the wet, hot brilliance of her cunt, and he could drown in the feeling.  Clarke lets him go almost as quick, kissing away the sting, and draws her hands down across his spine to cup his ass again.  She pulls him into her, fucking up and doing most of the work while he’s distracted.

Distracted, drowning, overwhelmed.  

Being inside Clarke— being _with_ Clarke—it hits him harder than he thought, and he takes half a second to catch up to the real world.  The real world where Clarke has her legs around his waist and he can feel her cunt surround him.  Like time has slowed down, Bellamy feels his body start to move.  His eyes catch hers, and in the faint glow of the room, it’s mesmerizing.  He holds her gaze as he fucks her, gentle at first and then, when she sighs, deeper.

They build a rhythm together, Clarke squeezing his arm when she wants to go slower, then pinching his ass to go faster.  Soon keeping their heads together is too much and she falls back to the bed, her neck a long column for him to lick and suck.  Her shirt is scrunched up above her breasts so he kisses those too, fucking her with a fierce, machine-like steadiness as he worships her tits.  Bellamy’s had dreams about these tits, and he’d feel guilty about that if she weren’t urging him on with little half-stuttered sighs and gasps.  

When her legs around him start to shiver and her fingers dig into his skin, Bellamy picks up speed, putting more passion and intent into every thrust.  He wants to be deeper, as deep as she’s ever let anyone be.  Bellamy would climb inside her heart if he could, make camp there and stay forever.  Clarke is gorgeous beneath him, a tapestry of soft skin disguising hard muscle, strong and hungry from six months on the ground.  She pushes up to kiss him again, and Bellamy thrusts his tongue into her mouth as he thrusts his cock inside her.  

He grinds up against the top of her cunt, and when she starts to shiver he drops one hand down between them.  His fingers find the slippery warm spot of their joining, and then he presses down on her clit.  Rubbing it fast and hard, he feels it when Clarke spasms.  A messy whine escapes her as her fingers press into the muscle of his back and her cunt clenches around his cock.  He fucks her through it, harder and faster, until her legs go slack and she lifts her head to meet his eyes.  

Even in the dark her lips are plump and from kissing, and there’s sweat on her brow and her cheeks are flushed.  Seeing her like that—knowing he’s made her look like that—it sends Bellamy over the edge in a sharp, hot wave.  He stays inside her as he comes, and Clarke wraps both arms around his shoulders.  She pulls him down, full-bodied atop her.  As his head falls to rest in the curve of her neck, his frame still shuddering, she kisses his temple.  

More kisses land on his eyebrows, his hair, and he’d like to reciprocate but he’s too boneless to move.  His eyes flutter closed for a moment, and he tries to breathe regularly.  

In.  And out.

The arms that held Bellamy up feel like lead, but he pushes himself off anyway, just enough to fall to Clarke’s side.  She turns into him, tucking her chest against his arm and throwing one leg over his nearest.  With disarming tenderness, she puts her hand on Bellamy’s cheek and turns him to face her.  She gazes at him, attention flickering over his face, his lips, and back up to his eyes.  Then Clarke rises, just slightly, to press her lips to his. 

It’s a soft petal of a kiss, the brush of lips barely an echo of the ones before it.  Her thumb caresses his cheekbone, a warm compliment to the feel of her body alongside his.  Bellamy’s eyes slide shut, and her face in the quiet darkness is the last thing he sees before exhaustion takes him.

  
  


 


	2. Sinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Past a set of wide doors on the right is the hearth of the signal fire, long smothered by the neglect and the rain, but Clarke doesn’t tell Bellamy that. She doesn’t tell him that she was held in this room for eight days before the coalition summit, that she kicked at the locks and screamed til her voice was raw, or that she held a knife to the Commander’s throat. What she does is close the door behind them, push him casually into the large chair by the desk, and climb into his lap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyyyyyy gais. I am too lazy to rewatch 315 so I just made up some details about how they were trapped, and the tower rooms. My headcanons coming out to play.
> 
> Opening lyrics are from the song "[2 Heads](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAeWAwdZf9I)" by Coleman Hell. Great for passion writing.

 

_I hope to god I’ll love you harder_

_I hope to god I’ll love you longer_

_I turn to you, you’re all I see_

_Our love’s a monster with two heads and one heartbeat_

 

When they wake up the next morning, it’s to fervent shouts and an explosion that rattles the tower.  Clarke jolts awake and is up looking for her clothes faster than she can properly think.  No time relish the casual comfort of Bellamy’s arm slung over her back, or the warm heat of a body at rest beside her.  Right now, circumstantial details barely register against the rush of fear for her mother, out there where the noise and violence is.  Memories of the noose and the throne room rip through Clarke until her hands tremble as she tugs on her shoes.

Another, shorter boom fills the air, followed by the racket of what sounds like falling bricks.  “No, no, no!” she yells, running to the locked door and damn near attacking it.

Barely a step behind, Bellamy shoves his feet into his boots just as she flings the heavy bar off the door and yanks the whole thing open.  Clarke darts from the room with Bellamy fast behind her, and when she stops abruptly at the center hallway he almost bowls her over.  With his chest solid against her back, they teeter in space for a moment.  She puts a hand on the wall for purchase, and one of his touches her hips.  It vanishes almost before she can catalogue the feeling, and he steps away.  Together, they look at the mess that has become the main stairwell.

“We had to blow it,” announces Miller, walking in from a door on their left.  “Cool, huh?  It was Bryan’s idea."  He pauses, gives the two of them a deliberate once-over, then continues, “We really need a—”

Clarke interrupts him.  “Is everyone okay?  Where’s my mom?”

Miller’s reply is brisk, but not without a certain kindness.  “Everyone’s fine, Clarke.  She’s out on the balcony with Kane, looking after the wounded." 

As if the wind is knocked out of her, a breath escapes Clarke and her shoulders drop.  Again she feels Bellamy’s hand on her hip, a warm anchor against the storm inside her.  Clarke leans into it for a selfish moment, then steps away.  He lets her go.

Walking up to Nathan, she peers over the edge of the stairs and sees rubble strewn down the steps, all the way past the curve of the stairwell.  The steps of the original spiral staircase are visible amidst the debris, and as she watches two people start down toward the lower level with a wounded third braced between them.  Another two people come up, carrying water and blankets.

Beside her, their friend launches into a story.  “You see ALIE had the staircases bricked up on at least four levels including this one, probably so the elevator could be defended more easily.  When we took that out yesterday, we locked ourselves up here, and until now we’ve been  trying to take apart the bricks and debris by hand.  Explosions are much better.”

“You’re risking the infrastructure,” comments Bellamy, joining them on Miller’s other side.  It’s the first full sentence he’s spoken since waking up, and the damage to his voice is audible.  He rumbles through the last word like his throat is full of bracken.

Gaze on the ceiling, Miller shrugs, his big rifle knocking into his hip.  “We’re fine so far.  Kane thinks we’ll have all our people out of this fucking building by this afternoon, and we can start ferrying everyone back to Arkadia.”

Bellamy nods, and Clarke glances past Miller to watch the way Bellamy’s hair falls into his eyes.  He needs to get it cut, she thinks.  Large, garish bruises line his neck and face, but otherwise he seems better than yesterday.  Shirt still untucked and only one of his boots laced, Bellamy looks sleepy and disheveled, but he carries himself with his back straight.  Her hands clung to those same wide shoulders last night; if she holds her breath she can almost feel his skin again.

“How are you?  How’s Bryan?" Bellamy asks.  Although the question is for Nathan, his eyes still drift to Clarke, and it’s enough to make goosebumps tingle up her arms.

Miller glances at Bellamy on his left, then at Clarke on his right.  Clearing his throat, he replies to the middle air between them: “He’s gonna make it.  It was touch and go last night but Abby got him temporarily stabilized, and he was alert enough this morning to start giving opinions.  He’s going back on the first ride home.  I’m beat up up, but I’ll live.”

“That’s good,” says Clarke, crossing her arms over her chest.  Her gaze jumps from the rubble, to Bellamy, and back to the rubble.  “I’m glad to hear he’ll be okay.”

“I’m glad too,” agrees Bellamy, breaking her stare to look at Nathan for almost the first time in the whole conversation.  His voice comes out gravelly when he says, “I really am, man.”

Miller says, “Yeah, thanks,” stepping back and tapping his rifle strap.  “You know, I’m gonna go check on him now.  Clarke, I’ll tell your mom you’re around.”

“Thanks, Miller.”

With a small wave, he turns and heads down the hall, leaving Clarke standing a few feet from Bellamy, surrounded by broken bricks and an escalating bustle of human activity.

“Hey,” he says, shifting his weight on one foot then the other.

As he speaks, his gaze drops to her chest and the bandaging visible above her collar.  At least, Clarke’s pretty sure he’s looking at the bandages.  The appraisal brings back a sense memory of Bellamy's mouth closing around her nipple as he pushed her shirt up.  She shivers, wondering if he’s thinking of last night too.

“How’re you feeling?" he asks, utterly sincere and concerned and... probably not looking at her tits, then.

Clarke sighs a little.  “I’m alright.  You?”

Bellamy shrugs, gesturing to his throat and giving a half-smile at the same time.  The corner of Clarke’s own mouth lifts in sympathy.  

Swallowing, he runs his hand over the back of his head, and glances toward the stairs.  “Probably gotta find O soon."  

“You should,” agrees Clarke.  Her hair falls into her face when she nods, and she realizes that it’s completely down, only the small braid in the back remaining after her rush to dress.  Blonde waves cascade in front of her vision for a moment, but before she can brush them back Bellamy’s fingers are there instead.  With small butterfly touches he cards his fingertips under the loose curls and tucks them behind her ear.  Safe and sound.

Speechless, she blinks at him.  With an expression lost in thought, Bellamy steps back, dropping his hand to his side.

“See you,” he says hoarsely, and turns to head down the stairs.

Hours later, when the rover has left with her mom and the most wounded of the Sky People, Clarke ends up supervising a group in emergency first aid.  They triage for the Arkadians and any grounder who wants assistance, even though most of those leave the tower as soon as they can walk.  Everything seems to be going well, relatively speaking, until Clarke gets called away from a child with a broken arm to go stop Dr.  Jackson from walking off the balcony.

They get to him in time, but for several minutes afterwards her hands won't stop shaking.

The day just gets more overwhelming as news trickles in.  Roan is alive, but barely, and his people have already taken him out of the city.  Indra survived too, and she’s resting in the Flamekeeper’s rooms at the base of the tower.  There’s close to two hundred and eighty Sky People that left Arkadia with ALIE; the others may be scattered across the countryside, or just dead from the grueling march to Polis.  One by one their people are gathering at the tower, waiting for help or a ride home.  Hungry, suicidal, and traumatized.  

As yet no major fights have broken out, but Kane says it’s only a matter of time, and Clarke believes him.  As people bustle in and out of the Commander's tower—Lexa’s tower—a pall hangs in the air like fog.  Being a gloomy spring day makes the collective depression worse as the sun hides its face except for brief, unhelpful breaks in the cloud cover.  Six months on the ground and Clarke can already smell when rain is coming.  It’s one more thing that would make the day worse for everyone’s temperament.  Anxiety lurks in the expressions around her, Grounder and Sky Person alike.  If they don’t get out of the city soon, this temporary peace will explode under the pressure of survival, and take all of them with it.

While she works with the wounded, Clarke tries her best to avoid both her old room and the Commander’s, but it’s a futile exercise.  Refugees are camped everywhere, and she has to go in and out of all the rooms more than once in the course of the day.  She tries to detach herself from the memories those rooms evoke, but the pain of her loss in this place curls in her chest and gnaws on her rib cage.  By the time Clarke gets on the long distance radio with Raven, her mood is gone to shit and she’s snapping.

“That’s what she told me.  Seven plants in active meltdown right now.  Over.”

“Clarke,” crackles the voice on the other end of the signal.  “We had no indication of anything like that when the Ark was up.  Are you sure?  Over.”

Despite her best attempts at restraint, anger bleeds into Clarke’s retort.  “Check the code, Raven.  You have records on your system, and there’s no A. I. keeping us out anymore.  See if you can find my last conversation in the program."  She takes a weighted breath, and adds, “Over.”

The radio goes dead silent for a minute, then her friend’s voice returns.  The tone is arch.  “Alright, Clarke, we’ll find out what’s left of ALIE’s records, and we’ll see if there’s a way to tap into her global monitoring program.  But if you're gonna be like this, you've gotta do something for me before you come home.  Over.”

Properly chastised, Clarke pushes the button on the radio.  “I’m sorry Raven.  I don't mean to snap at you.  What do you need?  Over.”

“Just get yourself, Bellamy, Octavia, and Miller back home.  And Doctor Griffin.  Everyone comes back safely, including you.  Or you get nothing from me.”

Telling herself this ultimatum shouldn’t sting as harshly as it does—that Raven’s only acting based on Clarke’s own past behavior—she speaks into the device with a quiet fierceness.  “That I can promise you.  Over and out.”

She's going home.  The world is ending, and she is going home.  Clarke glances at the hand that held the radio moments before; it wavers.  She clamps it into a sudden fist, forcing herself to breathe, but instead of calming her down, it's like the oxygen makes it all worse.

A cocktail of shame, anger, and barely suppressed panic flows through Clarke as she stalks into the main hallway, avoiding making eye contact with anyone.  She's not even sure what about the conversation set her off, if it was this at all.  Maybe it was the whole day.  Hour after hour of fixing up people who can barely function past the mind control is despairing enough; every time she tries to think of something else, ALIE and Becca's warnings swim through her mind.  They drive every thought toward a sense of futility and it's all too fucking much.

Outside there’s a crack of thunder, and as she passes a window she sees a roiling gray cloud haunting the city skyline like an omnipresent ghost.  Her attention lands on a pair arguing by broken elevator doors, as one rough voice rises above the din.  Clarke wheels around and waits, observing.

“Octavia, I know you care about Indra, but you don't know the whole story yet.  Can't you wait a little longer?  If you try now it’s not safe—”

“There’s no such thing as safe, and I don't care anymore!” the younger sibling hisses.  As Clarke stares, Bellamy steps forward with his face looking like the stormcloud outside, and Octavia holds her hand up.

“Save it."  She turns on one heel and heads for the rubble-strewn stairwell.  Bellamy’s jaw clenches as he sees his sister disappear.  In that pose, every corded muscle on his arms is visible as his fists clench into knots of bone at his sides.

Decision made, Clarke marches up to him.  

“Bellamy."  Startled, he blinks at her.  She's a little too close, and Clarke presses that advantage by leaning into his space, chest first.  “Do you wanna get out of here?’

It takes a second for him to react, then his gaze drops to her mouth.

“Yeah,” says Bellamy, and wets his lips with the tip of his tongue.  She’s pretty sure he doesn’t even realize he did it.  

As the gray sky opens above Polis, pouring out fat raindrops that pound the sides of the tower, Clarke takes his hand.  She leads him to a staircase on the side of the servant’s rooms, and it carries them to the topmost floor and the quiet office within.  Past a set of wide doors on the right is the hearth of the signal fire, long smothered by the neglect and the rain, but Clarke doesn’t tell Bellamy that.  She doesn’t tell him that she was held in this room for eight days before the coalition summit, that she kicked at the locks and screamed til her voice was raw, or that she held a knife to the Commander’s throat.  What she does is close the door behind them, push him casually into the large chair by the desk, and climb into his lap.  

He doesn’t waste time asking about her feelings.  Bellamy’s large hands grab her by the waist and tug her forward, rough, until the front of her pants scrapes his belt and her thighs squeeze his.  When she bends her head to kiss him, he tilts his mouth up like a hungry thing, chasing her through every gasping breath.  Clarke relishes the heavy pressure of his hands on her sides, the way the crush of their clothes scrapes her cunt and makes her wet.  Above them, the rain crashes on the roof, what seemed like a hum on the floor below now a rattling cacophony.

She slides one hand up his cheek, tilting his head back and kissing his chin, his cheekbones.  When Bellamy swallows his adam’s apple bobs and Clarke wants so badly to lick him there, but she holds back.  Clarke needs this to be as good for him as it’s gonna be for her, so she makes do with mouthing up the side of his jaw to his ear.  She licks his earlobe then pulls it in between her teeth, and beneath her Bellamy jerks in the chair, grip even tighter on her hips.  With her feet barely grazing the floor, Clarke raises herself up, bites his ear, and then snaps down on him again, crotch to crotch, and rolls her pelvis.

“Fuck,” pants Bellamy, turning his head and capturing her mouth for a kiss so wet and dirty that Clarke feels her cunt contract in response, clenching on nothing but the promise of sex to come.  

“Bellamy,” she murmurs, breathing and kissing him again.  It’s a challenge to keep her hands on his shoulders and his hair when all she wants is to curl her fingers at the the nape of his neck.  She compensates by scraping his scalp with her ragged fingernails, and his fingers dig so hard into her sides she might end the night with bruises too.

Dragging his lips off hers, Bellamy kisses her cheek til he gets to her ear and purrs, “What’s it gonna be, Clarke?  You got me all alone up here."  His hands move to her ass and he squeezes, as possessive and blatant as he’d ever touched her, and Clarke thinks she could probably come right then.

“Bellamy,” she repeats, taking in short, sharp breaths.  

“Yeah?”

There’s words she’s never said before in a bedroom, not when sex for Clarke has only ever hinged on loss and loneliness.  Always before, love was how she grabbed onto something just out of reach, throwing that part of herself into another person until she had something tangible to hold onto forever.  Finn, Niylah, Lexa... even Bellamy last night, in his own way, was about something greater than themselves.  Those encounters all shared a common thread that’s hard to break: lots of emotions, not much talking until after the fact.

From her messed up head down to the heat of her arousal, Clarke knows this is different.  All she has to do is get the words out.  Never before has she painted her desires as something open and needy, centered on simple gratification.  But that’s what it is, and why should she be ashamed to ask for that?  The world is already ending anyway: what they do or don’t do between the two of them will have no more body count.  Swallowing, she whispers her desires like a secret, pushing them out in a quiet rush of bravery.  

“I want to fuck you on this chair,” she tells him, lips moving against the shell of his ear.  She closes her eyes against his hair as she speaks, smelling the sweat and earth clinging to him.  “Just like this, with your clothes on, with me on top of you, until I come around you.  Can I... can I do that Bellamy?”

His breath almost stops, and he pulls back slightly to meet her eyes, searching them—searching her—before he nudges her nose with his and whispers, “Clarke, you can fuck me until one of us blacks out, then you can fuck me again, and I won’t leave this chair if you put a gun to my head.”

Closing her mouth, Clarke nods, and climbs off his legs.  As promised, Bellamy stays in the chair, slouching so that the hem of his tan shirt wrinkles at his his waist.  Clarke rakes her gaze over him as she unbuttons her pants, peeling them down her legs.  Before her Bellamy sits with his legs spread, his erection tenting his trousers and his brown-black eyes crawling up her body like he could touch her from a distance.  With clothes still covering her top half but absolutely nothing below, Clarke stalks back to him, anticipation sending heat up her cheeks when he sits straighter and reaches a hand to pull her back onto his lap.  

She finds his mouth again, and Bellamy opens beneath her tongue.  His hand drops to her front, skimming the rough curly hair there.  Clarke moans, and his fingers take the invitation, swiping down the lips of her cunt til Clarke arches into him.  “Yes, yes,” she urges, and drops her own hand between them.  She slides her palm over the back of his hand until their fingers align, then she pushes his middle finger and hers up into her cunt together.  She fucks herself on their intertwined hands, fingers getting wet and messy as her excitement climbs.

“Fuck, Clarke,” Bellamy tells her, his free hand locked on her back to steady her.  His voice is rough as gravel, and the fact that it’s deeper from his injury only makes it sexier.  The sound goes right through her ears to some caveman corner of her brain, sends a jolt to her center, and all she wants is to hear it again.

She grinds on the two fingers fucking into her and gasps, “Talk to me, Bellamy.”

He takes control of their hands, thrusting his longer finger up inside so that her own fingers curl into the top of her cunt.  “You feel that Clarke?  Your hand and mine, right here.”

“Yes,” Clarke pants, “I feel it.”

“You’re so wet right now, Clarke."  He kisses her neck, her jaw.  “Is this what you like?  Both of us touching you together?”

She rocks forward with a small whine.  “Yes.”

“Do you want me to get you off like this?  I can do that."  He pushes the both of their hands hard against her mons, and Clarke tightens her thighs around his legs like a steel vice.  She shakes her head, leaning back to pull their hands up.

“I want to have you inside me again.  That’s what I want, Bellamy.”

His chin jerks a little, and he brings her wet fingers up to his mouth.  Watching her expression, he sucks one finger into his mouth, then the next.  His tongue swirls around the tip of each finger before popping it out, biting lightly on her pinky at last.  Clarke inhales a rough gulp of air as she pulls her hand back, still wet but now with saliva, and kisses him full-on.  She can’t quite taste herself, but she can capture his tongue all the same, and honestly she could kiss him forever.

Leaning back, she mutters, “Dick, now,” between kisses, and Bellamy breathes a silent chuckle against her lips.  He encourages her hands to find his belt and fumble it open.  When the buckle keeps flopping in the way, she yanks the whole thing off him in two long pulls.  Then her hands go for his buttons and she has a grip on him at last.  Bellamy’s cock is hard and long in her palm, just wide enough at the base that her fingers can only just encircle him.  Clarke pumps up and down on him, liking the way his eyes go wide and dark at her touch.  His mouth drops open when he stares at her hand on him, his tongue touching his lips.  He looks up again to see her eyes, then kisses her hotly, ardently.

When they break apart gasping for breath, Clarke lifts herself and lines him up, sinking down until he fills her completely.

“Jesus, Clarke,” he groans into her neck, wrapping both around her back and holding her tight against him.  She leans into the contact, adjusting to the feel of him and dragging her fingers up his back, over the surface of his shirt.  Her hands run over lines that might be scars, and she finds the bumps of his spine, edged with muscle and firm under her caress.  

Clarke marvels at the simple act of touching him.  This is Bellamy.  This is her friend and her co-leader—her person—and now he’s inside her.  It’s the second time in two days, and already she thinks she might do damn near anything to keep him there.  As if sharing her thoughts, he kisses her hair, her ear, her cheek.  The kisses are gentle and confident: a message that this is good, this is right.  This is where they should be.

Clarke holds his face in her palms and draws his mouth to hers.  As they meet, she lifts herself partially up off his cock, then sinks down again.  Bellamy moans into her mouth, and with the next move she rolls her hips a little so that when she lands home he hits a new, sweeter spot.  She holds Bellamy in the cup of her hands, kissing him as she fucks him slowly, torturously.  His hands span her lower back beneath her shirt, and he urges her on with small noises, earnest touches.  

Clarke moves over him, rising and sinking until her thighs burn from the work.  Although hardly the frenetic scene she’d imagined when she pulled him in here, this new, methodical seduction feels just as intense.  When she rises it’s a hot drag inside her cunt; when she slides home it’s as if every part of him touches her at once.  With her tongue plunging into his mouth and his cock a hot presence inside her, it’s hard to tell who is fucking who.

He breaks off their kiss, inhaling deeply, and Clarke leans her forehead on his.  In the humidity of the afternoon storm, sweat rolls down both their backs, dampening their clothes and darkening their hair.  She rocks up and so far forward he almost slides out entirely; when she sinks back onto him again, she presses down until her mound grinds against his abdomen and she moans.

“The way you feel right now,” murmurs Bellamy, “It’s incredible.  You’re incredible, Clarke.”

She sucks in great gasps of air and she wants—needs—to speak, but how can she put this into words?  How he fills her up, hard and thick inside her—it’s unreal.  It’s an intrusion and a union at the same time.  It’s a heightened awareness of the goosebumps on her arms and the damp cling of fabric to her skin.  It’s the rain and the tower and the monsters waiting outside to eat them alive.

It’s her mother’s eyes as the scalpel presses into her skin and it’s the infinite kindness in Bellamy’s hands as he wraps her chest with a torn bed sheet.

All of it crashes into Clarke at once, everything violent and wonderful hitting her in the center of her chest.  Sobs take her body until she’s shaking, legs wrapped around Bellamy’s waist and her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her face tucked into the bend of his neck.  He holds her still, a rock for her to cling to, and whispers soft assurances as his hands run up her back.

“Hey, it’s okay.  You’re okay Clarke.  I’ve got you.”

She sniffles, digs her fingers into his tan shirt, and rides out the wave of emotion.  She feels him kiss the side of her head, pet her hair in gentle strokes.  “It’s alright Clarke,” he promises.  “It’s okay.  We can stop, I understand.  I understand.”

“No.”  When the word pops out it’s almost as much of a shock to herself as to him, but it tastes right in her mouth.  “No."  

“Clarke,” he begins, cupping her face in his two hands, “I _get_ it.”  The unselfishness in Bellamy’s expression casts a warmth in Clarke’s chest, reaffirming her instinct to go on.

“No,” she shakes her head a little, casting off his hands.  Kissing him fast and firm, she rolls her hips to remind them both how locked together they still are.  Her eyes shine bright from crying as she meets his gaze, but her features are as determined as when she led him up here.  “I don’t want to stop, Bellamy.  I told you what I wanted, and I still want that.”

He’s still hard inside her, that part of him always ready and wanting her, and a corner of Clarke is excited knowing that he’s just desperate for this connection.  “Do you want to stop?" she asks.

Bellamy opens his mouth to say yes—the word takes shape on his lips—but then his eyes catch hers, and she can see him wrestle with telling the truth.  With doing the right thing, or doing the thing he wants.

“No,” he replies finally, and lets his hands drop to her ass, tugging her in closer.  The rough motion pushes his cock just a little further inside her, and she clenches instinctively, relishing the feeling.  Relishing _him_.

“No, Clarke,” repeats Bellamy, sliding his mouth along her jaw.  As she curls one hand into his hair, he gives what she knows is his real answer. “I don’t want to stop.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that got darker than I planned! Haha, these poor tragedy babies. Crying all the time and feeling things.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and thanks to everyone who left such wonderful encouragement with the first chapter! If you liked the update, please leave a comment & kudos. Even if it's a few simple words, it means so much to me to hear that people connect to the story.


	3. Sly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Clarke stands one of her arms lands on her hip, all confidence, and she holds up a familiar key card. “I can’t drive yet, so looks like you’re back on duty. But you can tell me about it on the way.” 
> 
> Clarke doesn’t budge when he rises to his feet, though it puts them only inches apart. Eyes on her, Bellamy plucks the key from her fingers then steps towards the door, raising his eyebrows. “Good. Pay attention and you might learn something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyyyyyyyy everyone. I guess the world ended since I last updated?? Well no more crying, smut is here to help us stave off the doom ahead. When sad, make art.
> 
> Opening lyrics are from the song "[Hold Tight](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGBnJhkaQA)" by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Excellent smut song, particularly the ending. What a crescendo.

 

_Hold tight, count to three_

_Gotta stay close by me_

_And hold tight, sing and shout_

_Just ride my round-about_

_Hold tight, shut your eyes,_

_Girl you suit me for size_

 

With only a few vehicles, the evacuation trips back and forth to Arkadia are draining.  As one of the most experienced drivers, Bellamy ends up making the trip three times in a day.  When he gets back to Polis in the early evening hours he trades with a guardswoman named Natalia, then collapses on her bedroll while she takes another group home.  Even with sleep here and there—and a good six hours the night he spent with Clarke—Bellamy’s been running on fumes since they woke up on the beach outside Luna's rig.  Time catches up to him in one swoop as he hands Natalia the key card, a cosmic crawl so unforgiving that his eyes slip shut as soon as he hits the blanket.

He sleeps for the entire night and into the morning.  As the hours tick by more and more of his people consolidate around the bottom of the Commander’s tower, until the sun is halfway up the sky and a gentle hand touches his shoulder.

Bellamy blinks awake to the sight of Clarke, squatting on her heels and looking down with an expression of fondness.  She squeezes his shoulder companionably, then trails her hand down to his own and tugs on it.  “Come on, sleepyhead,” she says, “It’s the last day.  Two more trips and we’re done here.”

“We?” Bellamy asks, sitting up.  Clarke nods, her hand somehow still in his.  He doesn’t quite know what to do with the contact, so he settles for a light squeeze of her fingers, then lets go to tighten his boot laces.

When she stands one of her arms lands on her hip, all confidence, and she holds up a familiar key card.  “I can’t drive yet, so looks like you’re back on duty.  But you can tell me about it on the way.”

Clarke doesn’t budge when he rises to his feet, though it puts them only inches apart.  Eyes on her, Bellamy plucks the key from her fingers then steps towards the door, raising his eyebrows.  “Good.  Pay attention and you might learn something.”

To his surprise, she doesn’t take the opening for a sharp comeback.  Instead she grins at him, face pretty and hair backlit by the window.  He’s not sure what happened to Clarke in the day and a half since their encounter during the storm, or why that sad, intense girl seems to have been momentarily replaced by her cheerful doppelganger.  Overcompensating for the end of the world, probably.  Yet Bellamy’s heart jumps in his chest, and for the first time in weeks he’s grinning right back at her.  He barely feels the scrapes and bruises stinging his face, too amazed by how easily the expression comes.

“Lead the way,” she offers.  Her tongue curls to touch the back of her teeth.  

His gaze drops to her mouth, then he smiles wider, pocketing the key card and spinning on his heel.  “Let’s get out of here.”

With a car full of Arkadian refugees, nearly the last of their people not well enough to walk, they don’t get much time to talk for real on the road.  Even so, it’s the best trip he’s had so far.  Being around Clarke for a prolonged period of time again is like a weird energy boost, leaving Bellamy both antsier than usual and somehow more focused, too.  The car full of relative strangers helps.  Without the blatant stares of their friends picking apart every gesture, he can send glances over to her anytime he wants.  

Her hair has taken on more of its natural wave since they were last together, and each time it’s like seeing her anew.  Inch by inch, he can glimpse the girl he used to know emerging from her shell.  The impulse to reach over and sweep a blond curl hits him just as hard as the other day.  She might let him, but Bellamy still doesn’t know the rules of this scenario they’re playing in.  Easier not to risk it.  In the spare moments when he can pull his eyes from the rough driving conditions, he catalogues as many details as he can about the sight of her.  

Clarke’s wearing Ark-issue pants this time, a patchwork leather jacket that cuts off at her waist, and underneath that is something Bellamy has rarely seen: a button down shirt.  They weren’t popular on Ark, as they tended to fall apart faster than others.  The shirt she’s got on now is a dingy yellow-gray, with mismatched buttons holding it together in a way that does amazing things for her breasts.  It’s hard not to stare, and admittedly he’s not trying.  One of her middle buttons has slipped out and though Clarke doesn’t seem to have realized it yet, there’s a tiny gap that Bellamy can’t make himself ignore.  He remembers pressing his mouth to that exact spot below her breasts, and all he fucking wants is to do so again as soon as possible.

Fantasies aside, it’s good to see her face.  To watch Clarke turn in the seat and listen to the people in the back, teasing out their stories one by one.  Bellamy doesn’t have the ego to assume that her gradual reassertion has to do with them sleeping together, but now that they have—twice—he thinks he might have more insight into where her head’s at.  Something had broken in Clarke since they landed;  hell, something had broken in Bellamy too.  But she hasn’t given up like he’d once thought and knowing that buoys him.

When she doesn’t talk to their passengers, she talks to him.  With his throat still damaged it’s easier to keep conversation down to the essentials, but Clarke makes up the difference.  The tired girl beside him isn’t an overly chatty person, so it means a lot that she’s taking the burden of conversation.

The better part of Bellamy feels guilty about it, this kernel of warmth in his chest when he listens to Clarke rattle on about the new political situation with Roan and Indra.  With a second apocalypse about to fall on their heads he should be wallowing, but it just seems easier to fill his mind with her voice.  Maybe grief is like a well, and when you’ve drawn all the sadness you possibly can, you’re bound to hit bottom.  Bellamy thinks this might be where his well stops.  To believe that after all they’ve been through, they’re just going to die anyway: it’s asking too much.  A universe too fucked up to comprehend.  He’d rather lean back in the tattered seat of the one-hundred-year-old jeep and quietly savor the fact that Clarke is beside him.

When they get to Arkadia, he fully expects Clarke to disembark with the group and join Abby with the wounded, but she opens her passenger side door with a clank and tells him, “I only need ten minutes.  Don’t leave without me.”  

“You didn’t need to come,” he comments once they’re on the move again, traveling up a broken, half-paved road through the trees.  It still hurts to talk, still comes out like he swallowed gravel, but every day he’s getting a little better.  “I’ve driven back on my own the last two times.  You could be back working with your mom.  Or you could have stayed in Polis this morning, helped from there.”

She shrugs, scooping her hair to one side of her neck and running her fingers through the tattered ends as she considers her response.  “I’m doing good work here.  Evacuation is the priority, and no one should be going out without a partner.”

His face must be giving something away, because Clarke adds, “Even though Indra said they wouldn’t attack if we all left by tomorrow, it’s still not safe in Polis.  I think things will actually be easier for them if I’m out of the picture as much as possible.”

“Arkadia is safe,” points out Bellamy.

“I’m also safe right here,” Clarke returns, “As long as you don’t run us into a tree.”

It’s nice, if weird and new, to know that Clarke could be anywhere she wants, maybe even helping someone, yet she’s decided to keep him company.  Bellamy doesn’t know if that means she thinks he’s in greater need of help—which is a worrying thought—or if she just wants to get away from the world.  Either way, new.  And nice.

He clears his throat.  “Big words from someone who doesn’t even know which pedal is the brake.”

She gives him a sidelong glance.  “I hear you don’t know what an actuator is.”

A puff of breath escapes Bellamy, not quite a laugh, and it takes all his focus to keep his eyes on the path ahead.  “This’ll be a long drive, I can tell.”

The drive back up to Polis takes them late into the afternoon, and each minute feels closer and closer to disaster.  They only stop once to relieve themselves before climbing into the Rover and pushing on, faster and more reckless without anyone wounded in the back.  The pace is worth it: the sun sets on the sight of the final eight members of the Sky People in Polis piling into the back.  A line of sullen, armed grounders watches them go.  Joselyn, a child of nine and last to step into the Rover, waves at them before the door closes.  One of the adults shushes her quickly.  Behind the driver’s seat Bellamy turns the wheel to roll out, never having turned the engine off.

Three hours into an all night trip, and they have to stop before there’s a full on mutiny in the rover.  This group isn’t as convivial as the previous batch; they’re relieved to be out of the city, of course, but getting kicked out of an artificial heaven and then being the last to be rescued has a way of making people anxious.

“The children need to pee,” insists Javier, a teacher from Alpha station who’d spent at least one of the last three hours talking Clarke and Bellamy’s ear off.  He has Jocelyn on his left side and two even younger boys holding hands on his right.  The four of them are lined up on the unforgiving metal bench in the back of the Rover, a string of frustrated and frightened faces.  The passengers across from them, two teenage girls and older couple, simply look exhausted.  Javier glares.  “Oh y no es de ninguna ayuda que eres más lento que una tortuga.”

Bellamy and Clarke share a glance, then he sighs and pulls the Rover over beside a copse of trees.   He’d rather get closer before stopping, but Bellamy understands better than most how cruel it is to force a child to hold back.  And the truth is, they can afford a stop.  They’re between  territories, and the moon is out.

“Alright,” announces Bellamy, turning in his seat.  “We’re stopping for fifteen minutes.  Pee, stretch your legs, take a catnap if you want, but stay in sight of the rover at all times.  We’re doing this on the buddy system, which means no one steps out of this vehicle alone.  If you see anyone, do NOT approach, just stay quiet and come back immediately.”  They all nod, the older couple smiles at him, and then in a bustle they spill out of the double doors and into the moonlight.

From the passenger seat across from him, Clarke gives him an assessing look.  

“What?”

“Fifteen minutes?”

Bellamy shrugs, “An extra few minutes won’t change anything, and it’ll make Javier shut up.”

“Right.  Javier,” she agrees, nodding along with him.  His gut instinct screams that Clarke is making fun of him somehow, but Bellamy shrugs it off, and opens his door.  “Seeing as we’re the last out, guess we’re buddies.”

“Hmmm,” is all he gets in response.  She steps around the hood, pauses, and gives him a full body once-over.  Bellamy tenses instinctively, feeling himself stand a little taller under her appraisal.  As Clarke’s gaze crawls from his feet up to his waist, his chest, and finally his eyes, she says, “I’m going that way,” and points in the opposite direction of where the others had gone.

Clarke strides past him, feet crunching on the pine needles in the dark.  Swallowing, Bellamy glances around at his people, and nods at ones standing near the Rover.  Then he refocuses his attention on the blond shape of his best friend disappearing into the trees.  He does the math in his head: just under fifteen minutes doesn’t leave him much time, but if this is going where he thinks it’s going, maybe they won’t need much.

As they walk he lets Clarke stay a few paces ahead of him.  She starts talking to him anyway, glancing back every once in awhile as she tells him about what trouble they might run into for the last leg of the drive.  Bellamy knows he should be paying attention, but all he can think about is how she looks in the moonlight falling through the trees.  He loves the way her eyes meet his over her shoulder, that teasing tilt of her head.  It’s better than thinking about the hollow faces on the survivors in Polis, or the soft crying of children in the back.  The judgment in his sister’s eyes.

When they’re about fifty feet from the group his patience ends and he grabs Clarke’s hand, spinning her against one of the enormous tree trunks and pressing the whole line of his front against hers.

She gasps, her eyes jolting up to his.  Bellamy doesn’t kiss her, just lets his mouth hover close.  He brings the hand they’re sharing up above Clarke’s head and presses it to the tree, fingers curling together.  His other hand traces the lowest button of her shirt.

“What’re you doing?” she asks, trying to keep a cool expression, and Bellamy snorts.

“Oh please, Clarke.  You were angling for this.”  He nudges her nose with his.  She nudges back, playful.  

“Maybe,” she goads, “But I really think—”

Bellamy cuts her off, his lips smashing into her own, and Clarke groans as her words are swallowed in the rough kiss.  She arches into it, her free hand climbing up his back.  Like this is old practice, her head tilts one way and his the other until they fit together in aggressive symmetry.  Clarke tries to pull down the hand he’s holding against the tree but he squeezes it instead, and she retaliates by shoving a hand up the back of his shirt.  They kiss, gasp, and kiss again.

“Why do you always have so many clothes on?” he mutters, dropping her hand from the tree and sliding both palms up her stomach, trying to pull apart the buttons of her shirt.  “We’ve done this twice and I still haven’t really seen your breasts.”

“Don’t, it’s cold,” hisses Clarke, nipping at his lip.  “And we probably shouldn’t be doing this anyway.”

With a grumble Bellamy gives up on her buttons.  He refocuses on caressing her thighs.  “If you believed that,” he replies between panting kisses, “You wouldn’t have left the rover.”

“Maybe I want a minute alone to myself?”

He shakes his head and drags his lips down the column of her neck.  “You don’t want to be alone,” he whispers to Clarke’s collarbone.  “You want to pull your pants down right here and let me eat you out.”

She kisses him deeply then inhales, shaking her head.  “That’ll take too long.”

“It won’t take _that_ long,” he says, sliding his hand down to cup her through her pants.  She laughs in a sharp gasp, the sound like a crack in the night air.  Bellamy loves the way it floats around them both, ringing in his ears.  If he can get Clarke to make that sound again, that would be enough.  It would be so much.

Recapturing her lips, he crowds even closer to her.  “We have about nine minutes,” he reports, “So we can make out, or you can go for option two.”

“What’s option two?”

When Bellamy leans over to whisper the answer in her ear, Clarke shudders under his hands: “Option two is I spin you around and brace your hands against this tree, then I fuck you from behind until you come or we run out of time.  Whichever’s first.  Tick tock, Clarke.”

With her eyes bright in the darkness of the forest, she swallows and sticks out her chin.  “Well if we keep talking we won’t have time for that either, so a get a move on.”

Her expression might be haughty, all Alpha Station daughter from birth, but the sly mockery in her tone summons a grin from Bellamy.  Without further warning, he grabs her waist and spins her around, immediately leaning down to kiss the stretch of her neck exposed by the collar of her jacket.  Clarke starts to undo the buttons of her trousers; he stops her, gently unpeeling her fingers.  

“Let me,” he whispers, dragging his lips up to her ear.  Bellamy listens to her tense breathing as he places one of her hands, then the other, on the flat scratchy bark of the tree.  Then he unbuckles his belt and drops his own pants, aware of the minutes disappearing on them like air.  The night air is cold against his ass but his cock is hard and he pulls on it experimentally.  He’s had sex twice in the woods twice since coming to Earth, both in those first few weeks, but the idea of Clarke wanting it sends a jolt through his system.  

Like new information, like a secret, he files these moments away: Clarke likes slow and deep.  Clarke likes fast and public and messy.

Clarke likes fucking, and so far she really, really likes fucking him.

With care and quick fingers he finishes undoing her trousers and drags them down to her knees.  Clarke immediately spreads her legs apart as far as she can.  At the same time she leans back to kiss him over her shoulder, and Bellamy obliges.  He’s learned this too: how much she likes to kiss.  While their lips dance he slides both hands over her thighs, right to her center, and Clarke pushes back against him.  His dick bumps into the naked curve of her ass, and right then Bellamy honestly doesn’t care that none of this is a smart or safe or responsible thing to be doing on an expedition.

“We’re wasting minutes,” she whispers, and he obliges by slicking his fingers up and down the wet folds of her cunt.  She sighs, and he parts them to slide his cock finally inside her.  The heat of Clarke is almost a blinding shock after the cold air of the forest.  As their mouths hover together, kissing then breathing and then kissing again, Bellamy pulls out and then slides in, deeper each time.

“Yes,” breathes Clarke.  She falls away from him, leaning forward against her arms, and Bellamy knows that this is it.  They’re almost out of time.  Locking his hands on her waist he begins to thrust into her, fast.  Everything about Clarke is hot and wet and intoxicating; this is so much more than with anyone else.  She’s not even looking at him—her face tucked into the arms bracing her up—but Bellamy feels like he’s deep enough to drown in her.

“Bellamy, please,” she moans, and he thinks she might say something else but her words stutter down to a soft, sexy sound that he immediately craves.

Leaning over Clarke’s back, pulling her closer and until they’re both bent almost horizontal, Bellamy mouths at her neck while he fucks hard and fast.  She whimpers at the new angle, the same hot precious noise.  He thrusts quicker, harder, slamming their bodies together in rough simpatico.  When he lightly bites her ear, she shivers.  “Please, please,” she whines again.  “Yes.  Come on.”

Bellamy knows they have to hurry, he knows they’re cutting it close, but time stopped feeling important when he was finally inside her again.  As their bodies move Clarke’s hands swim into his vision: white lines against the dark tree trunk.  Her fingers gripping the bark, rigid and pale, is one of the most erotic things Bellamy has ever seen.

“Do you want to keep doing this?” he asks Clarke, one hand on her cupping her breast above her shirt and the other digging into her hip.  Bellamy doesn’t mean to ask it now, not like this, but the question slips out of him.  She rocks backward, and the minutes are crumbling away.  Tick tock.

“Even when we get home?” he adds.  Everything shifts again, and now he’s hyper-conscious of the passage of time, of the rough pounding of their bodies as they race the countdown of this moment.  “Even when we can’t run away afterwards?”

Fucking backward into him, Clarke growls his name once— _Bellamy_ —then reaches for the hand cupping her breast.  She gathers his fingers up until he’s touching her face, and then Clarke Griffin really shocks him.  Like she knows exactly she’s doing, like she’s done it before, Clarke slips two of Bellamy’s fingers into her mouth.  Pressing against the flat of her tongue.  Hooking onto her.  She places her hand back on the tree at the same time as her mouth closes around his digits, sucking hard.  Too much, too fast; the result is nothing short of sudden sensory overload.  When Bellamy thrusts into her he can feel it in his fingers and his cock at the same time.  

“Yeah,” he groans in her ear, the world spinning around them.  Tick tock.  “We’re definitely doing this.”

With a low moan Clarke jerks under him and bites down on the hand in her mouth.  Suddenly she’s almost too tight around him, her cunt clenching as her gorgeous body shivers.  Her teeth scrape the pads of his fingers, and then he’s gone too.  Bellamy swears against her neck, chokes out, “Clarke,” and finally pushes into her once, twice, three times.  

They stop together, held in suspension in the quiet moonlight, until Bellamy’s fingers slip out of her mouth and his head drops to her shoulder.

“Jesus,” he whispers.

“I know,” she whispers back.  Then, like the other shoe dropping, Clarke pushes away from him abruptly.  “Shit! Bellamy, we gotta get back.”

They hastily pull up their clothes, then Clarke pauses mid-button and looks around.  

“What?” asks Bellamy.  

She swallows.  “You go on ahead.  I need to pee.”  That sounds like an eminently bad idea, but she scowls at him, so he nods and turns towards the road.  Bellamy goes a polite twenty or so feet then stops, resolute and intractable.  Clarke can have her privacy but no fucking way he’s heading back without her.  A minute later, and it’s moot.

“I told you to go,” she hisses as she speed-walks right by him, arms swinging.  He watches her ass go too, unashamedly.  “I’m not afraid of the woods just because it’s dark.”

A dozen retorts spring to mind, discarded as quickly as they land.  “You’re beautiful from this side,” he tells her instead.   

Clarke’s sharp laughter cuts through the night again, and just a step behind, Bellamy grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally a little bit of fun, huh? If you liked the chapter, please leave a comment! They boost my smiles.


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